Twisted Triangle (18 page)

Next they stopped so that Gene could buy some deodorant, but once they got back to the hotel, Margo was disheartened to see that he’d bought a box of condoms instead.

She felt the emotional and physical strain of the last few days taking its toll, and started to worry that she would crack during her false testimony.

“Why do I have to lie on the stand?” she asked. “Why can’t I just tell the attorneys I’m going to change my testimony?”

“Recanting your story has to be done publicly, so you have to be on the stand,” he said.

When they got into bed, Gene tried to pull Margo to him, but she resisted.

“Gene, I don’t want to do this.”

“It’ll help us relax,” Gene said again. “And I have a rubber tonight.”

Margo felt even more tired and drained than she had the night before. Feeling like an empty shell of a person, she stopped protest-ing as he climbed on top of her.

“Talk to me,” he said. “You know what I like to hear.”

As beaten down as she felt, this was one small battle Margo was determined to win. She remained silent as Gene did his business. The experience was more unpleasant than it had ever been. Margo felt as if she were outside her body, watching and waiting for him to fi his dirty work.

He never put on the condom.

And she never had sex with a man again.

The next morning was D-Day. Margo was fi going to testify.

After Gene left the hotel at 7:30 am, Margo didn’t have anything to do before testifying but wait.

Gene told her to page him at 11:55 am to make sure her head was clear. She took the Metro into DC and called him before she met up with her attorney.

“You doing okay?” Gene asked.

“Yes,” Margo replied. “I don’t really want to do this, but I’m okay.”

By 12:30, she’d arrived at Brian’s offi riddled with apprehen-sion.

“Are you nervous?” he asked, glancing over at her as he drove them to the courthouse. She was sitting on her hands, which got cold when she was anxious.

“You’re going to be just fine,” he said, reassuringly.

“Do you promise to stand by me no matter what?” she asked.

Brian, who had no idea how loaded her question was, looked at her and smiled. “Of course,” he said.

To Margo, the courtroom felt old and on the smallish side. Only six or eight people were sitting in the gallery, including Brian,

who was in the front row behind the prosecutors. A couple of people she didn’t recognize, whom she later learned were reporters, were in the back row. Gene was at the defense table with his lawyer Reid Weingarten, a former trial attorney for the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section.

After lunch, around 1:30 pm, Margo was the fi witness to be called to the stand, which was only seven or so feet from the judge.

She was sworn in while the jury was in the room. But as soon as prosecutor Bruce Reinhart started asking questions, Reid objected, saying her testimony should be precluded by spousal privilege, the legal mechanism to exempt information passed between spouses.

U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Penfi Jackson excused the jury so that he could hear enough of Margo’s testimony to rule on Reid’s objection.

“Did there come a time in late September of 1986 when you overheard a conversation between your husband and Jerry York?” Bruce asked Margo.

Gene stared straight at her as she answered. Her mouth was dry and she was trembling.

“Your honor, let me clarify,” Margo said. “I am under oath still, correct?”

“Yes, you are,” the judge said.

“Actually, the time period was in August of 1986. My husband and I entered into a fi agreement to purchase the house from Jerry and Brenda York. Up until this time, up until today, I have misled Mr. Reinhart and Ms. Isaacson, and I would like to explain what’s happened. . . . No one has done anything wrong here, your honor. To my knowledge, the transactions that we entered into with Jerry and Brenda were entirely legitimate.

“What happened is in September of 1992, September 8th, my husband served me with divorce papers. . . . A lot of terrible things were said to one another. We were both up all night. My husband was threatening to take my children from me. I went into work the next day to try and get away from the hostilities that were going

on at the house, and I was exhausted. I was a mental basket case. I was confused.”

“Let me stop you just at this point,” the judge said.

Hearing a dramatic reversal in the direction of her testimony, he asked if she’d conferred with her attorney about her statement.

“No, sir, I have not.”

“Well, I’m not sure that I want to hear it before you talk to Mr.

Gettings,” he said.

“Well, your honor, I mean, where I’m coming from is that this is the first time I’ve ever been placed under oath and under threat of perjury, and I’m not going to sit up here and perjure myself.”

The judge reiterated his strong suggestion that she talk to her attorney before saying anything more under oath, then called a recess.

Brian Gettings took Margo by the arm and led her into the room just outside the courtroom where defendants generally consulted with their attorneys. Margo sat at the table while Brian paced around her.

“Why are you doing this?” Brian asked.

“I wouldn’t do this if it wasn’t important,” Margo said, looking him in the eye, “but I can’t tell you.”

“Wait a minute,” he said, and left the room.

When he came back, Brian said he’d told the judge he needed a recess for the rest of the day.

“Let’s go,” he said.

As they were leaving the courthouse, Margo was met by a
Washington Post
photographer whom someone, presumably Gene, had tipped off. The photo he took of her that afternoon not only ran with a story in the
Post
the next day, but with articles in numerous national publications for years to come. Margo’s hair was blown back by the wind, and she looked gaunt and haunted. She’d lost almost a dozen pounds during her harrowing week with Gene Bennett.

Neither she nor Brian said a word as he drove them back to his offi but Margo could sense that he was quite frustrated with her.

He took her to a conference room and rolled his chair right up to her, their knees practically touching.

“Margo,” he said, “you’ve got to talk to me.”

“Brian, I can’t,” she said shakily, agonizing over what to do. “I know you. You wouldn’t do this. What is going on?”

But Margo couldn’t jeopardize the lives of her children. She felt frozen. Gene had only prepped her to the point of lying on the stand. Now she was on her own.

“What’s it going to take for you to talk to me?” he asked.

Margo felt that one person, and one person only, could help her figure out what to do next: John Hess.

“I’ve got to talk to John,” she said.

Brian didn’t much like this idea. He didn’t know John, had never met him.

“I don’t want you talking to anyone else,” he said.

But after considering his options, Brian gave in and called John at his home in Fredericksburg.

“It’s against my advice that Margo speak with you, but she’s insisting,” Brian said. “She says she won’t talk to anybody else.”

With that, Brian handed Margo the phone and walked a few feet away to give her some space.

Margo began to babble as she tried to explain what had re-ally happened with Gene so far. It took her about fi minutes to tell a story that many of their colleagues would not believe. It was such a crazy tale, some dismissed it out of hand. Many couldn’t believe that an undercover agent for the FBI would ever do such a thing to one of his own, especially his wife. Further, they thought, if Gene had really wanted to kill her, he could eas-ily have done so. Others found it hard to believe that a trained agent like Margo would have bought into a ludicrous story about Colombians ordering the kidnap of her and the girls. For most of them, the coup de grace was that she’d had sex with Gene in the hotel room. Twice. That eliminated any remaining shred of her credibility.

But not for John.

John had never liked Gene and thought he was a sociopath. That said, John was amazed and frustrated with Margo for for-getting all her training and falling victim to Gene’s manipulative tactics. However, John cared very much for Margo, so he listened, trying not to interrupt.

“The kids are gone, and they’re in danger. If I testify, they say they’re going to hurt the kids,” she said.

That’s when John couldn’t stay silent any longer. “My God, Margo, listen to what Gene is saying to you,” he said, his words clipped. “You know this is not true.”

“John, I don’t know what to do,” Margo said weakly. “I don’t know where the kids are.”

“For Christ’s sake, you’ve got to tell the truth,” John said. “Tell them the truth.”

As Margo felt herself coming out of the surreal fog she’d been in for the past week, she slowly began to accept the possibility that she’d been duped. After they hung up, Margo told Brian the whole story.

When she was fi Brian went to get his partner, Frank Dunham, and had her tell the story all over again.

“My God, Margo, this is crazy,” Frank said. Margo put her head down and parted her hair.

“Give me your hand,” she said, placing Frank’s fingers on the burns and scrape marks on her scalp. “That’s from the taser.”

“Oh, my God.”

Brian called prosecutor Marcia Isaacson, gave her a brief recap, paused and then repeated everything he’d just said.

Afterward, Brian told Margo that he’d run through the story with Marcia, but she’d held the phone out to her partner and said, “I can’t deal with this. Here.” So Brian had to tell it again.

For the next hour, Margo and Brian waited for two FBI agents to arrive and take her statement.

“In my entire career, never have I had anything as bizarre as this,” Brian said.

Margo was still unable to let go of the possibility that Gene was telling some piece of the truth. “I don’t know where my kids are. I need to know my kids are okay.”

“Margo, can’t you see that Gene’s lying?”

“I just need to know that my kids are okay,” she repeated. After discussing the best way to check on the girls, Frank and

Brian suggested that Margo call the Prince William County police. She persuaded the police to go to the Nokesville house, but when they called back fi minutes later, they said the house was dark and no one was home. This did little to reassure Margo.

It turned out that the girls had stayed the weekend with Tracy, the babysitter Gene had hired. But it would be two more days before Margo would learn that the kids had never been in harm’s way.

Agents Charlie Price and John Roberts interviewed Margo at Brian’s offi for the better part of three hours, until close to midnight. At one point, John Roberts left the room, and his partner looked at Margo with utter scorn.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” Margo asked.

“I’ve got to tell you, Margo,” he said. “If I had done to my wife what you say Gene did to you, she would not have had sex with me. She would have taken my gun and blown a hole in my head.”

Margo didn’t say a word. She could see what was happening.

Oh, God
, she thought, her heart and stomach dropping to the floor.
Nobody believes me
.

Margo went out to the lobby and found Brian pacing near the elevators, rubbing the back of his neck and looking as if he wished he could smoke a cigarette.

“Margo, I don’t know what we’re going to do,” he said. “But whatever we do, it will be the right thing.”